Cows and sheep have been in the gun for some time. Now it's worms. Is any life any good? We have been told that trees give off lots of methane so they're no good either. I guess Greenies must be necrophilic (lovers of death). They certainly want to reduce the population of people drastically, so it fits

Worm composting could be doing more harm than good to the environment, a leading researcher claimed today. Jim Frederickson, senior research fellow at the Open Universities faculty of technology [Britain], said: "Worms produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases. Recent research done by German scientists has found that worms produced a third of nitrous oxide gases when used for composting." The `wiggly ones' naturally produce nitrous oxide gases when they are put into the process of composting.

Worms can be used for home grown composting or commercial composting and are typically red worms. They are used to recycle food scraps and other organic material into valuable soil worm compost, otherwise known as vermicompost. This compost can then be used to grow plants.

"We have concentrated on getting waste out of landfill and into worm composting systems but they can actually produce more greenhouse gases than landfill sites produce," Frederickson said. Under the Waste Strategy the Government has strongly supported the composting of waste in efforts to reduce the landfilling of biodegradable waste. This includes encouraging householders to invest in home composting systems. The Government wishes to increase the amount of waste which is composted to 40% by 2010 and 45% by 2015.

Although Frederickson says that worm composting is a positive thing, he claims that not enough research has been done on worms releasing polluting gases.

Frederickson said: "Everybody loves them because they think they can do no harm but they contribute to global warming. People are looking into alternative waste treatments but we have to make sure that we are not jumping from the frying pan into the fire. "We need to investigate all alternative systems for greenhouse potential. "The emissions that come from these worms can actually be 290 times more potent than carbon dioxide and 20 times more potent than methane. In all environmental systems you get good points and bad points."

I remember the other day watching some program on TV about Tony Blair stepping down as Prime Minister of Britain. The woman was of the opinion that Tony Blair’s legacy would probably be remembered for the mistake that was Iraq. Well they withdrew a lot of troops recently and England is known to be the most accommodating of Islam, so this should come as a surprise to some in England. Probably not to most of us though.

A huge manhunt is under way for a group of suspected al-Qa'eda terrorists after two car bombs were planted in the West End of London. The first, a Mercedes filled with petrol cans, gas canisters, and nails, was primed to explode as hundreds of revellers poured out of a nightclub. The second, another Mercedes, was dumped in the area and its deadly cargo discovered by parking wardens who had towed it - unwittingly - to a car pound. They became suspicious of a strong smell of petrol or gas. The attempted bombings prompted fears of a new summer campaign by extremists. Today's Gay Pride in central London, expected to attract up to 500,000 people, is to go ahead as planned.

They appear timed to coincide with Gordon Brown's arrival as Prime Minister and came two years after the July 7 attacks on London. The row over Salman Rushdie's knighthood may also be a factor. Hours before the bombs were found, a message appeared on the internet, in the al Hesbah chat forum, a Sunni website frequently used by al-Qa'eda and the Taliban to disseminate propaganda. It read: "Today I say: rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed". It attacked the author's knighthood. "We, and the whole world has seen what Britain has done ... their intention to honour Salman Rushdie who insulted and slandered Islam." Source.

Want to know when this might stop, I’ll tell you when England, when your academics and other fools start to see accept a little country in the Middle East surrounded by enemies and fighting for its survival every day. When you no longer have to be shamed into looking after old soldiers that fought for you in forgotten wars. When you no longer give any quarter, any escape and any oxygen to people who preach hatred of you on your own soil. When you no longer regret helping an ally who bled from being attacked in a cowardly fashion. When you no longer regret freeing a people and giving them a chance at a better life. When you decide your place is with a General who is not giving the enemy an option to surrender. When you cause a disproportionate amount of pain to an enemy that captures and parades your soldiers. When you humble and humiliate those who oppose your handing out of a knighthood by encouraging suicide bombings.

That is when you’ll be on the road back, until then you have to get lucky every time and they only have to get lucky once. Feeling lucky England?

Here's a list of the top 12 types of people who need to get off the planet, now. Please just fucking die already....

12) Anyone who uses the term "Carbon Footprint," "Global Footprint," or just plain "Footprint." Christ, give it a rest....

11) Dishonest, pro-illegal alien racists who use the phony argument that deporting these shitbags will "split up their families" (while also telling us sob stories about how Hector had to leave his wife and eight of his fifteen kids back home in Guatemala).

10) Journalists who write reports about how men will soon become "obsolete" (because cloning technology will make it so that women can have babies by themselves). Give me a fucking break. Women (especially American women) will always need men to support them, open up stuck jar lids, do yardwork, and pretty much run the world. Besides, most American women are totally enamored with criminals, murderers, sex offenders, druggies, shaved head douchebags,and prison trash. There will always be a need for these people because the demand is so high.

9) Newscasters who roll their "R's" and punctuate their "T's" in order to "properly" pronounce Hispanic names. This was made fun of on SNL about 15 years ago. We're all laughing at you.

8) Any douchebag who has a spider web tattoo on his elbow. Please just kill yourself.

7) Anyone who buys into the lie that martial arts can help a small person beat up someone much bigger than himself. It's total bullshit. What DOES help a small guy beat up a big guy is amateur wrestling (but it's so fucking gay, it's better to just get beat up).

6) Intellectual lightweights who don't "get" Ann Coulter.

5) Dipshit investors who bemoan the fact that Americans learned nothing from the Dot Com bust in the late 90's, even though they themselves are now jumping on the equally fradulent "Green Investment" bandwagon.

4) People who speak with fake Limey accents.

3) Retards who don't speak or read a lick of Chinese (and who have no knowledge of history) who get Chinese tattos or wear "commie fashion" like Che Guevara T-shirts (or the Chariman Mao bag that #%*$ Cameron Diaz carried around in Peru). Here's a clue, dipshits: A red star generally means communism. Duh....

2) Any no-life loser who camps out for days in order to get iPhones, Star Wars tickets, Playstation 3s, or anything else that shut-ins are clamouring for these days.

The article Explaining the Relation Between Birth Order and Intelligence by Petter Kristensen and Tor Bjerkedal (appearing in the journal "Science") seems to have got quite an amazing amount of press so I thought I should say a few words about it. I did not make any comment initially because I thought that it raised no new issues and was not in any way surprising.

To recap briefly, the authors did some very clever statistics on data from Norwegian army recruits which show pretty clearly that being a firstborn raises your IQ by a few points.

I think the reason the article has got such a lot of attention is that the political Left seizes on environmental causes of intelligence like a thirsty man in a desert. All the evidence is of an overwhelming genetic influence on IQ so anything that appears to "undermine" that will be highlighted -- given the traditional but vastly counterfactual Leftist belief in the infinite plasticity of human characteristics.

But the Norwegian findings don't in fact undermine anything. Although IQ is one of the human attributes that is most strongly influenced by genes, nobody has ever claimed that genes alone do the trick. It has always been known and asserted that environmental factors have a subsidiary role -- and stimulation in early childhood has long been agreed to be one of those subsidiary factors.

And firstborns get more attention and hence most stimulation. So a small advantage from being a firstborn was always to be expected.

Perhaps the most amusing part of the coverage given to the findings is the way that old scientific fraud, Frank Sulloway, has managed to insert himself into the discussion. Sulloway is a great advocate of birth order as an influence on human behaviour so I suppose it had to happen but Sulloway's own theory is that birth order determines your politics and, among social scientists, I think it is only the credulous who believe that these days. Sulloway's sustained attempts to block publication of evidence contradicting his theory probably tell you all you need to know about that.

Just a footnote: Did you know that your politics are even more heavily determined by your genetics than is how tall you are? Some people (Leftists) are just born crybabies. See Eaves, L.J., Martin, N.G., Meyer, J.M. & Corey, L.A. (1999) Biological and cultural inheritance of stature and attitudes. In: Cloninger, C.R., Personality and psychopathology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. Pesky things, those genes!

Kevin Rudd has vowed he will abolish all Australian Workplace Agreements, ending weeks of infighting over whether the ALP will preserve some of the individual contracts. In a blow to business lobbyists and a boon to the unions, Mr Rudd gave The Daily Telegraph an "absolute guarantee" that AWAs would be scrapped under a Labor Government.

The move has scuttled elements within the ALP pushing for a more modest winding back of the workplace changes, such as retaining AWAs but reintroducing the no-disadvantage test to ensure employees are not worse off. It also scotched the concerns of West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter, who publicly opposed the abolition policy and suggested Mr Rudd would back down on parts of Labor's industrial relations reform in light of the massive resources boom.

Asked if the party would scrap all AWAs -- unfair or not -- Mr Rudd said he would abide by the position adopted at the ALP conference in April, which states: "AWAs will not be a part of Labor's workplace laws and there will be no place for statutory individual contracts. "There will be sensible transitional arrangements that give businesses and employees certainty."

However, it is believed that where an employee elects to serve the remainder of his or her AWA they will be able to, after which they will most likely be placed on a common law contract underpinned by award conditions.

Unions NSW secretary John Robertson, a key Rudd backer for the leadership, who has publicly called on the Labor Leader to articulate his position, was thrilled with the pledge last night. "It's pleasing to hear Labor making positive statements reinforcing their stance on AWAs," he said. "They need to be out there making sure everybody hears it loud and clear." Source.

MK – Well, there you go Australia, loud and clear, Rudd is a Union lackey and if you vote for him you’ll be voting for the Unions, Kevin Rudd is going back to the days before even workchoices. Out with the individual, he doesn’t care if you have an arrangement with the boss, maybe you work harder and produce more and therefore get more, but that’s all down the crapper now, shut your trap and join the rest of the workers. The choice is yours Australia, what say you?

Michael Freund, writing in the Jerusalem Post about how Israel used to deal with terrorists that took Jews hostage as bargaining chips.

IT WAS 31 years ago today, on June 27, 1976, that armed gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, together with some German accomplices, hijacked Air France flight 139, diverting it to Libya and then on to the city of Entebbe, in Idi Amin's Uganda. As the world looked on, the terrorists proceeded to separate out the Jewish and Israeli passengers, threatening to kill them if Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails were not set free.

Back then, however, Israel was not yet in the habit of yielding to terrorist demands. No international summits were convened at Sharm e-Sheikh, no "gestures" were made to the terrorists, nor were any tax receipts transferred into their coffers. Instead, Israel reacted precisely as it should have, by launching a stunning military raid on July 4, 1976, freeing virtually all the captives and bringing the situation to a sudden and dramatic end.

In one fell swoop, Israel had underlined its role as the sovereign defender of Jews everywhere. An entire generation was inspired to believe that the Jewish people were determined to defend themselves whatever the consequences might be.

That was 31 years ago, The Spirit of Entebbe, but that spirit has been replaced by the spirit of leftist ideology, appeasement of the enemy, consensus and concessions and appealing to global public opinion. Has anyone ever stopped to think that the global public, have little idea of what is going on in Israel, apart from swallowing the lazy and biased news that is fed to them by the media. Do they know or care that it’s just a few elitists, sipping lattes and sucking on lemons safe and sound in western countries, whining noisily every time someone does something around the world.

After agreeing to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to the Abbas-led regime, and to strengthen the armed Fatah gangs loyal to him, the premier presented his Palestinian counterpart with an unexpected parting gift. "As a gesture of goodwill to the Palestinians," Olmert declared, "I decided today that I'll bring to the Israeli government at its next meeting a recommendation to release 250 prisoners from Fatah without blood on their hands."

Then, in what passes for Israeli resolve and determination these days, the premier insisted that the Fatah terrorists would be freed, but only if "they sign commitments not to become involved again in terrorism." Phew. And I thought they would be let go for nothing. Apparently, it didn't dawn on the Prime Minister to link the release of Palestinian terrorists with freedom for Gilad Schalit, or to condition any further movement on the diplomatic front with progress towards his return home.

Instead, the fact that a young Israeli Jew serving his country was abducted 12 months ago by a group of thugs was treated as if it was a pesky and tiresome nuisance, rather than a substantive and fundamental matter of principle.

Yeah make all the concessions Olmert, we’ll all sit around sipping lattes far away from you folks in Israel dodging Kassams and Katyushas, avoiding buses and cafes and nod our heads. Sure, what a good fellow that Olmert is, he is so accommodating to those misunderstood terrorists, such a nice fellow, where is that online opinion poll again, big tick to Israel for their kind nature from us.

Just remember there is a price to pay for appeasement and when that time comes, I’ll bet Olmert and his band of merry friends won’t be around to help out, oh and by the way that global opinion that you think was so favorable of you back then won’t be around to help you fight for your lives either.

Newsweek has just given a big plug to a book called "The Political Brain" (by Drew Westen of Emory University) that purports to tell Democrats how to win elections. The writer of the review does not know the difference between "discreet" and "discrete" so the intellectual level to be expected is not high -- and so it turns out. Note the paragraph below . It combines very old news with a bald-faced assertion:

"When voters are hooked up to brain-imaging devices while watching candidates, it is emotion circuits and not the rational frontal lobes that are most engaged. When voters assess who won a campaign debate, they almost always choose the candidate they liked better beforehand. The rationality circuit "isn't typically open for business when partisans are thinking about things that matter to them," Westen notes. Yet "this is the part of the brain to which Democrats typically target their appeals."

So emotions matter in politics! Give the writer a cookie! But what is the proof for the second assertion -- that Democrats target their appeals to rationality? As far as I can tell it is the opposite. For instance, "All men are equal" may be emotionally satisfying but it has no status as a fact.

A NEW political party is set to contest this year's federal election with one clear goal - giving women a voice.The What Women Want Australia (WWW) party, launched in Brisbane today, said it wanted to improve Australian political life and policy by involving more women.source:

I reckon this is a great idea--women can now vote for candidates based on their appearance and what they read about them in Women's Weekly. No more of that hard policy stuff, no more dealing with abstract, difficult concepts such as the role of the military and intellgence services in an unstable world or the tradeoff between liberties and responsibilities.Nossir! They can do what female judges and magistrates and public servants do already--confuse the responsibilities of their jobs with the role of being mommy. The Oprahfication of politics will be a natural progression from the work they've already done in fucking up the West with their rotten PC "safety first at all costs mommy knows best" mindset.The "giving women a voice" line would be hysterically funny if it wasn't so damn arrogant. Women already have a "voice"--a voice that's all but succeeded into turning little boys into honorary little girls, a voice that's denigrated and devalued the masculine in our society to the point where boys are suffering emotionally and academically.By all means form a party girls. You lot couldn't organize a bunfight in a bakery and it'll be fun to watch the ensuing chaos.(I should insert the usual disclaimer here about there being some very fine women out there but I won't--you know who you are)

Yes, been a very naughty little fellow haven’t you, you stand there while I wag my finger at you and scold you lightly, what was it schnookums, mummy didn’t hug you when you were a baby, was daddy not around? There, there baby, you wait while I glare at those mean coppers, what do they know, you didn’t mean any of it did you, now, now, no need to pout, we’ll show them.

Police evidence tendered to Bidura Children's Court shows that not only was the teenager already on bail for aggravated break and enter but also known for armed robbery, possessing an unregistered firearm, drug offences, assault, traffic offences, resisting police, larceny, maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm and breaching bail.

Magistrate Eve Wynhausen was made aware in Monday's hearing that it was the youth's 18th birthday but it was a show of support from friends and family that swayed her to give him bail, as long as he reappeared before her yesterday. She refused to discuss that bail decision with The Daily Telegraph yesterday after the teenager – who cannot be named – bolted and she was forced to issue a warrant for his arrest. Source.

Yes, all that egg on her face, takes a while to clean it all up, while this bungling leftist is busy coddling criminals, it won’t be her doing the work to catch this piece of work again, oh no, that’s for those coppers. They get to do all the heavy lifting, all over again. As for 53-year-old Sheik Mukhtar Saheb, one of the victims of this vermin, justice will remain elusive, sorry Saheb, justice is only for this vermin, Wynhausen doesn’t give a rats ass if you’re 53 or 83, it’s baby that she’s worried about, because you know it’s not really baby’s fault.

The article below is a typical rant about racism from a Left-leaning Australian newspaper. Typically, it makes no distiction between opinions about race and racism. To do so would deprive the author of much of the warm inner glow of righteousness she got from writing it. But, as any psychologist can tell you, attitudes are not the same as behaviour and it has been known since the 1930s that, in this field particularly, attitudes and behaviour are often very different. My favourite example of the disjunction is a neo-Nazi I once knew who was great friends with a very dark-skinned Bengali. I also once knew a very kind man who spoke very ill of Asians but who was in fact happily married to one.

We all have opinions about groups of people. What do most men think about busty women, for instance? And what do women think about tall men? There is rarely indifference in either case. So there is nothing wrong about opinions of racial or ethnic groups either. It is only when people are ill-treated solely because of their race that there is cause for concern and the label "racism" is justified.

The article below mentions the multifarious prejudices that the English typically have -- class prejudices and regional prejudices particularly. They even mock redheads! As an Australian who has spent some time in England, I have myself experienced the mocking comments that the English sometimes direct at Australians. I just directed a few mocking comments back which were received with perfect good humour and which moved the conversation onto a perfectly amicable level.

People will always be mocked by someone for something and it is about time everyone grew up enough to handle it. So let us hear from the self-righteous one:

I was at a smart party with a bunch of people I hadn't seen for years. Suddenly there was a yelp at my elbow. Fabulous Miss C, tanned to the gills, absolutely cured. She'd also done something to her face. "I hear you're living out at Springvale now. P told me. She said there aren't any dogs out there, because the chinks have eaten them all." And off she went into a squealing peal of laughter. It's a long time since I heard someone say "chinks" and make a joke like that. I told her that what she said was ridiculous, that of course there are dogs in Springvale, hundreds of them. I should have also told her she was revoltingly racist, that talk like that is not acceptable. But I did not.

A friend was dining at the home of "aristocrats" when the hostess rattled her jewels and complained about all the new immigrants from Africa, crowing that they should "send them back up the trees". The company laughed indulgently - such a rabid old eccentric. One simply could not take her seriously. No one told her off.

Racism is a disease found among people of all incomes, education levels and ethnic types. Even within the same ethnic type: in London Australians are patronised, treated as "dumb colonials" with the wrong accent. A German friend lived there for many years and waited for the inevitable swipe at every dinner party. "It was relentless," she told me. "Germans are seen as humourless, efficient manufacturers of precision instruments. We are disliked but we are taken seriously. Australians are not taken seriously. My only defence was to get ahead of them, tell a joke against Germans before they got theirs in."

I was warned a guest I had from the Balkans was sure to be a "broken and scarred person". When I suggested that such stereotyping was racist the response was angry. How dare I accuse them. My years working in the Jewish community have elicited "concern" from some. "Do they - uh - pay you properly?" When I return a quiet, withering gaze they too get angry: "Oh for God's sake! I just wanted to make sure you were alright!"

Perhaps two small examples of mocking the English back might help someone. The first is of my own devising and the second I owe to the inimitable Barry Humphries. The two examples spring from derogatory comments about Australian wine and comments about Australian male friendships being suppressed homosexuality. The two comments I make on such occasions are:

"Australians are much like the French. They make a small amount of good wine and a lot of rough wine. And the stuff that is too rough even for them they sell to the English"

"That's just a rumour put out by Australia House to attract all the English immigrants"

Please check your rights at the front desk and proceed in an orderly fashion to your stations with the rest of the minions. As KG posted earlier on new Sporran regulations, it’s not just the Sporran wearers who will be cudgeled into line.

It turns it into a constitutional freak, a bureaucratic Frankenstein’s monster without a shred of democratic legitimacy, which will destroy what remains of our powers of self-government and make Mr Blair’s apparent ‘opt-outs’ absurdly irrelevant.

For example, the EU is now to have its own foreign minister. The fact that this panjandrum will be called the EU’s ‘high representative’, which sounds like something straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan, does not detract from his power — which is to head a diplomatic service with ambassadors worldwide in pursuit of an EU foreign policy.

What’s more, member states will be forced to support that policy ‘actively and unreservedly’– and will be barred from launching military strikes or declaring war that might be thought to damage the EU’s standing. In other words, we would be forbidden from defending our own interests and would be forced instead to do whatever the EU collectively decides. Full Article from Melanie Phillips.

Imagine that Iranian kidnap fiasco happens again, what is Britain going to do if Brussels tells them; look the Iranians are selling us oil at a discount, so you guys will have to take one for the team on this. If you don’t like it you can always write a letter and wait 7 working days for a reference number, please quote this reference number when making inquiries. As more bitter fruits are reaped from these forays into mad left ideology, I wonder if it is too late to change course.

Despite Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) opposition and per the request of the BBC, the coordinator of government activities allowed a Hamas member who works for the BBC to enter the Gaza Strip last week to assist in efforts to release kidnapped journalist Alan Johnston. The employee, who lives in Gaza, had traveled to Egypt with his wife for medical reasons and the BBC told Israeli officials that they believed he could assist in negotiating Johnston's release.

The Shin Bet objected to the BBC request, saying that the employee was actually a member of Hamas, and perhaps even a terrorist operative. "We did not want to be blamed for holding up Johnston's release," one official said, explaining the decision to allow the Hamas member into Gaza. The Palestinian entered Gaza, and after a few days informed his BBC employers that Johnston was not being held by Hamas and therefore the group had little influence over his captors, believed to be from the Army of Islam and members of the Durmush clan from the Rafah area in the southern Gaza Strip. Source.

MK - Hope you’re not holding your breath Israel, for those merry leftists at the BBC to thank you or to change their bias against you. Even though you’re not holding any journalists captive without charge and doing who-knows-what to them, you’re still the bad guy. None the less, good on you for trying to help.

The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting “a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole,” frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed “the worst of the worst” by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations.

The regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir, which is responsible for at least 200,000 deaths in Darfur, didn’t just escape any censure. Sudan was a co-sponsor on behalf of the Arab League of the latest condemnations of Israel, adopted last week.The council’s chairman, who rammed through last week’s decisions without a vote, is a diplomat from Mexico.source:

If you listen to the global warming alarmists working for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore, sea levels across the globe are rising at a rate that will eventually doom us all.

According to Swedish paleogeophysicist Nils-Axel Moerner, who's been studying and writing about sea levels for four decades, the scientists working for the IPCC have falsified data and destroyed evidence to incorrectly prove their point.

Moerner was recently interviewed by Gregory Murphy of Executive Intelligence Review, and began by making it clear that the sea level claims made by the IPCC are a lot of nonsense (emphasis added throughout, h/t Eduardo Ferreyra):

[W]e can see that the sea level was indeed rising, from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-40. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year. Not more. 1.1 is the exact figure. And we can check that, because Holland is a subsiding area; it has been subsiding for many millions of years; and Sweden, after the last Ice Age, was uplifted. So if you balance those, there is only one solution, and it will be this figure.

That ended in 1940, and there had been no rise until 1970; and then we can come into the debate here on what is going on, and we have to go to satellite altimetry, and I will return to that. But before doing that: There's another way of checking it, because if the radius of the Earth increases, because sea level is rising, then immediately the Earth's rate of rotation would slow down. That is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when they rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and the same comes up: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely not more.

1.1 mm per year? That means that if this were to continue for 1000 years, sea levels would be 1.1 meters higher. Doesn't sound very catastrophic, does it?

Moerner then addressed what in his view was a ridiculous error by the IPCC:

Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. But we have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It's the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn't use. And if that figure is correct, then Holland would not be subsiding, it would be uplifting. And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that.

But that was just the beginning of Moerner's problems with the IPCC:

Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.

Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line-suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a "correction factor," which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow -I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!

That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They "know" the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don't find it!

Pretty extraordinary, wouldn't you agree? A "correction factor." Honestly, the way these folks manipulate data is nothing less than astounding. Yet, Moerner wasn't finished, as he later detailed an incident when IPCC scientists actually destroyed evidence which refuted their rising sea level claims:

This tree, which I showed in the documentary, is interesting. This is a prison island, and when people left the island, from the '50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this tree alone out there, they said, "Ah, freedom!" They were allowed back. And there have been writings and talks about this. I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the 1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone. I used it in my writings and for television. You know what happened? There came an Australian sea-level team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? And we came to launch this film, "Doomsday Called Off," right after, and the tree was still green. And I heard from the locals that they had seen the people who had pulled it down. So I put it up again, by hand, and made my TV program. I haven't told anybody else, but this was the story.

They call themselves scientists, and they're destroying evidence! A scientist should always be open for reinterpretation, but you can never destroy evidence. And they were being watched, thinking they were clever.

A Tennessee mother fed up with her daughter's misbehavior took an unusual tack in for latest punishment, making her stand on a busy street corner with an attention-getting sign. Tashara Wilkins, 13, held a sign Sunday reading, "I don't obey my parents, I'm a liar. I steal from my mom. I have a bad attitude."

Tashara said having to wear her offenses was eye-opening. "It might even work," she said. "I'm gonna start (behaving better) because I don't want to be standing out here with everybody looking at me like I'm crazy with this sign." The mother said her daughter would go to church Tuesday night wearing the sign. Source.

And in other news.

Philippine police chased down an unfit thief on Tuesday after he ran out of breath and asked his pursuers for a "time out". "He was panting and gasping for air when we caught up with him after a 500m sprint," Erwin Buenceso, one of the arresting officers, told local radio station dzBB. The robber asked for a "time out" using hand signals. After he regained his composure, police seized the two stolen phones and brought him to a station for questioning. Source.

Juma Gul, who collects scrap metal for money, told Afghan tribal leaders and US soldiers that militants cornered him in the Taliban-controlled district in southern Afghanistan's Ghanzi province. "When they first put the vest on my body I didn't know what to think, but then I felt the bomb, "Juma told Associated Press. "After I figured out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help." Juma said he was scared when he was surrounded by the Taliban fighters, and cupped his hands together to show the size of the bomb beore running his hands along his waist to show where it was on his body, Associated Press reported.

The Taliban has dismissed the story as propaganda, but both Afghan elders and US soldiers are convinced Juma's story is true. Local government leaders have also backed Juma's account. Chief administrator for Juma's village of Athul, Abdul Rahim Deciwal, took Juma to a meeting between Afghan elders and US Army Col. Martin Schweitzer. Col. Schweitzer called the Taliban's attempt "a cowardly act." "I think the boy is intelligent," Col. Deciwal said. "When he came from the enemy he found a checkpoint of the ANA (Afghan National Army), and he asked the ANA: 'Hey, can you help me? Somebody gave me this jacket and I don't know what's inside but maybe something bad'." Source, Thanks also to The Midnight Sun, they were onto this days ago.

MK – However Muslims may feel about the west, this is such a low, it’s just so shameful and disgusting, they should roundly condemn this, issue a fatwa or declare that this type of scum should never be welcome in their religion or in Arab society.

Window cleaner Keith Fenn, 24, could have been jailed for life after twice attacking the girl in a riverside park. Judge Julian Hall was at the centre of a storm over the "pathetic" sentence he imposed after hearing the girl had appeared much older than her age. The same judge caused uproar earlier this year by setting free another paedophile and telling him to give his victim money "to buy a nice new bicycle".

In the latest case, Oxford Crown Court heard harrowing details of the assault on the 10-year-old. She was attacked in a park in South Oxfordshire by Fenn and his accomplice Darren Wright, 34, on October 14 last year. Fenn removed all her clothes and raped her, then Wright took her to his home and sexually assaulted her.

Yet Judge Hall said the case was exceptional because the "young woman" had been wearing a frilly bra and thong. She was on her own when she met the pair in the street. They went to the park together. The judge said he faced a moral dilemma. The court heard that the girl regularly wore make-up, strappy tops and jeans.

He gave Fenn concurrent two-year and 18-month sentences but he will be free in just weeks after spending eight months in jail awaiting sentence. Wright is a free man because he too had served eight months on remand. Source.

MK – A moral dilemma, is this fellow for real? This reminds me of that German judge who didn’t think that a Muslim woman should get a fast-track divorce because it was part of their culture to be beaten by her husband. So if she didn’t wear make-up, would he then add an extra year onto the sentence, perhaps a non-frilly bra would add another few months. And I don’t know why they bother with “…could have been jailed for life…” the way justice systems seem to work you’d have to have raped a thousand kids before they lock you away for good. Hopefully they can appeal this and get a proper punishment for these two sickos.

Michael Meyers, president and executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, said indigenous cultures were an antiquated concept and Aborigines needed to move away from the land if they were to improve their lives. "People have to move out of their ghettoised attitudes, get away from the idea that people belong in certain lands."

Mr Meyers said Aborigines who stayed in their homelands were restricting their opportunities and contributing to their own social disadvantage. "Unless the land is something valuable, unless the land is something that is making you a meaningful human being who can interact with the rest of society, then it has no value," Mr Meyers said. "What value is the land to Aboriginal people when they have all these kinds of problems, or misery, of unemployment. What value is the land to them? The land doesn't sound very valuable to me." Mr Meyers, who is on his first trip to Australia, said notions of Aboriginal identity had the potential to stop economic development and further disadvantage indigenous communities.

"(Aborigines need to) stop thinking of themselves as different from other people," he said. "Stop reinforcing negative expectations based on one's group association. It's a free world, it's a big world, get into it. Get out of those miserable conditions by any means necessary. Get the hell out of there." Mr Meyers said Aborigines needed to be prepared to move to seize educational and employment opportunities. "If I were an Aboriginal I would want to get out. I was born and raised in Harlem and as soon as I could get out I got out and never went back," said Mr Meyers, who now lives in a middle-class neighbourhood in Manhattan. Full Article, Picture Source.

Anyone interested in seeing first-hand what a simple and fair tax system can help accomplish should visit Estonia. After gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the little Baltic country first tried its luck with the kind of progressive tax system so popular in the West. Productive people were punished with higher tax rates, and savings and investments - the lifeblood of future prosperity - were subject to double-taxation. Not surprisingly, Estonia did not prosper. To be fair, the tax system was just one of many problems plaguing the nation. But it was ironic that Estonia hindered its economic recovery from communist enslavement by using a fiscal regime - progressive taxation - advocated by Karl Marx. No less ironic is the fact that most capitalist economies have adopted that counterproductive taxation model as well.

Seeking a new approach to jump-start its economy, Estonia adopted a 26% flat tax in 1994 and never looked back. Combined with other free-market reforms, the flat tax has helped Estonia become one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Tallinn is now a boom town, filled with expensive cars, elegant shops, trendy restaurants and new construction. Estonia's system is not a completely pure version of the flat tax model. But it is remarkably free from distortions, exemptions, loopholes and penalties. The flat rate applies to both personal income and business income. And since one of the key principles of a flat tax is that income should be taxed only once, there is no death tax, no wealth tax and no double-taxation of savings or dividends.

With such a simple and fair tax system, it is hardly surprising that Estonia is now the Baltic Tiger, growing faster than every other post-Soviet economy. In the last six years, growth has averaged nearly 9%. And that's after adjusting for inflation.

I’m sure all the families would say he was an angel, never hurt a fly, this is ludicrous, only went to Pakistan/Lebanon because the summer posies are in full bloom at this time of year and he loves posies so much. Did you know ‘The Posies’ are a Seattle (USA) based pop band, also described as an American alternative rock group.

A Sydney man arrested in Lebanon is not connected to a hardline militant group and will be released some time in the next few days, his family says. Ibrahim Sabouh, 33, has been living in Lebanon for more than a year with his wife and family. Mr Sabouh, who has worked in finance in Sydney, was arrested on Thursday by Lebanese security forces at his apartment in Abu Samra, near the northern city of Tripoli.

Lebanese authorities are reported as saying Mr Sabouh may be connected to the militant group Fatah al-Islam, but his family has denied the claims. "I don't know where the hell they got that from," Mr Sabouh's nephew, Zac Sabouh, told AAP today from his family's Auburn home in Sydney's west. "We read the papers as well - that's a load of shit." Source.

Yes, yes off course, can someone over at the AFP and ASIO do a bit of digging, just have a look around for certain things like, you know, if the fellow is on a disability pension but is running in marathons or something ‘innocent’ like that. Check if he is on the dole but is sipping soy chai lattes and nibbling biscotti in the latte belt and don’t forget this little bit.

Australia's Sunni and Shia Muslims have formed a united front against Israel and declared their support for the Iranian-backed terrorist network Hezbollah. Source.

See, this is why we regular folks are skeptical, on the one hand they insist their trips to the homelands are just for peace, strawberries and tourism, but then they go and express solidarity with terrorist groups, so it’s hard not to be suspicious.

A LOCAL Islamic Jihad commander has been killed and four people wounded in an Israeli air strike on a car driving through Gaza City. The aircraft fired at least one missile at the car as it drove through northern Gaza City, witnesses said. The dead man was named as Hossam Harb, 32, a local leader of the Al-Quds Brigade of the hardline Islamic Jihad, medics said. Two of the wounded were members of the same group.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that the aircraft "launched a raid against the Gaza Strip". "It targeted a cell of Islamic Jihad responsible for firing rockets against Israel... and which was planning to launch other terrorist activities," she said. Islamic Jihad has said the car was carrying people on a "holy mission", which is code for an attack on Israel, the Associated Press reported. Hamas television footage showed a rocket inside a burning car. Source.

MK – A similar account is reported at Al Jazeera, but from looking at the photos I managed to find on the net, it doesn’t look like a missile struck this car, the seats are not burnt or melted and there is little sign of fire damage that you would expect from a missile strike, maybe the missile missed and they shot at the car or something. Looks more like the IAF strafed the car, none the less one less jihadist to worry about.

Just last week when the Aussie PM pulled out the big stick to tackle the problems in Australia’s aboriginal community, some were squealing racism. Leftists when challenged over abortion or gay marriage will squeal human rights are being violated. When leftist losers can’t sell their boring books or no one listens to them, they squeal that freedom of speech is being trampled. Talk about immigration and wanting to keep out folks who want to come in through the back door and it's the trifecta xenophobia, racism and human rights.

Europe sees creationism as threat to human rights. Europe's primary human rights body will vote on a proposal this week to defend the teaching of Darwinian evolution and keep creationist and intelligent design views out of science classes in state schools in its 47 member countries.

The unusual move shows that a U.S. trend for religiously based challenges to the theory of evolution is worrying European politicians, who now see such arguments put forward in their countries by Christian and Muslim groups. Source.

Maybe I’m just the only one in the dark here, was Darwin’s theory proven, is it now fact, proven, case closed? Did we all arise on the planet from puddles of some fluid or is it that leftists are a bit scared of being questioned, having their flimsy beliefs questioned and torn to pieces?

THREE would-be muggers got more than they bargained for when their teenage target fought back and beat them up - and lectured them while she did it.

The 17-year-old girl punched the male thug in the groin and let loose on the two females with him when they jumped on her.The trio, who were trying to steal the teen's car, ran off "with their tails between their legs".The incident happened in the undercover car park at Darwin's Casuarina Square last week.

The teenager, who did not want to be identified, said she panicked when the trio approached.

"I was walking to my car alone and they were yelling out 'give me your keys, give me your car, give me your bag'," she said."I hopped in the car in a panic and tried to lock the doors but it didn't work. I got dragged out of the car and they hit me a few times.

"Then the guy tried hopping in the car and grabbed my handbag but the strap got caught on the gear stick.

"I just swung and hit him in the nuts and he hit the ground screaming."

The teen said she then elbowed one of the girls in the face - giving her a blood nose - and they ran away.The teen's 57-year-old father said he was "bloody mad" about the attack but was proud of his daughter.

"I told her never to do that again as they could have had a knife or anything," he said."But it sounds like she certainly showed them a lesson or two. She's never been in a fight before, but she's a pretty tough girl. She told them 'what are you doing out here robbing people, you should be at school'."News.com

Here's why much of the region is so unhinged - and it's not because of our policy in Palestine or our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. First, thanks to Western inventions and Chinese manufactured goods, Middle Easterners can now access the non-Muslim world cheaply and vicariously. To millions of Muslims, the planet appears - on the Internet, DVDs and satellite television - to be growing rich as most of their world stays poor. Second, the Middle East either will not or cannot make the changes necessary to catch up with what they see in the rest of the world. Tribalism - loyalty only to kin rather than to society at large - impedes merit and thus progress. So does gender apartheid. Who knows how many would-be Margaret Thatchers or Sandra Day O'Connors remain veiled in the kitchen?

Religious fundamentalism translates into rote prayers in madrassas while those outside the Middle East master science and engineering. Without a transparent capitalist system - antithetical to both sharia (Muslim law) and state-run economies - initiative is never rewarded. Corruption is.

Meanwhile, mere discussion in much of the region of what is wrong can mean execution by a militia, government thug or religious vigilante. So, Middle Easterners are left with the old frustration of wanting the good life of Western society but lacking either the ability or willingness to change the status quo to get it. Instead, we get monotonous scapegoating. Blaming America or Israel - "Those sneaky Jews did it!" - has become a regional pastime.

And after the multifarious failures of Yasser Arafat, the Assads in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein and other corrupt autocrats, many have, predictably, retreated to fundamentalist extremism. Almost daily, some fundamentalist claims that the killing of Westerners is justified - because of a cartoon, a Papal paragraph or, most recently, British knighthood awarded to novelist Salman Rushdie. The terrorism of Osama bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban is as much about nihilist rage as it is about blackmailing Western governments to grant concessions.

This comment from a New Zealand lefty over at NZ Conservative about how to fix the problems in Aboriginal communities:

"Psycho Milt said...

"Sometimes it's necessary to make the hard decisions."

Howard's already proven himeself incapable of that. The hard decision would be to go down NZ's path - sign a treaty recognising the original inhabitants and establishing some basis other than theft for the later arrivals to be there, then set about using that treaty for either the return of stolen land or some kind of compensation for it. Throwing welfare money at the problem may have been an easy and poisonous decision, but putting the blame back onto the Abos and hitting them hard is also an easy decision, given that it plays perfectly to Howard's racist electoral base. "There ya go--a socialist expert knows that we're all racist and that a treaty and the return of stolen land would fix things.Now, how easy was that, eh?

The writer of the excerpts below has tried to turn it into a "Hate-Israel" piece but the facts marshalled are in fact another wonderful Gideon story -- of how high human quality can grab triumph from a much more numerous enemy. SCA has a fisking of the pathetic anti-Israel component in the article, mostly not reproduced below

Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hizbullah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith. At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?

Israel's economy isn't booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-90s, when the country was in the vanguard of the information revolution - the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack, and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.

Within three years, large parts of Israel's tech economy had been radically repurposed. Put in Friedmanesque terms, Israel went from inventing the networking tools of the "flat world" to selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of 24-hour-a-day showroom, a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world.

Discussions of Israel's military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country - US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank, and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel's huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2bn in "defence" products to the United States - up dramatically from $270m in 1999. In 2006, Israel exported $3.4bn in defence products - well over a billion more than it received in American military aid. That makes Israel the fourth largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Much of this growth has been in the so-called homeland security sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2bn, an increase of 20%. The key products and services are hi-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems - precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories.

Next week, the most established of these companies will travel to Europe for the Paris Air Show, the arms industry's equivalent of Fashion Week. One of the Israeli companies exhibiting is Suspect Detection Systems (SDS), which will be showcasing its Cogito1002, a white, sci-fi-looking security kiosk that asks air travellers to answer a series of computer-generated questions, tailored to their country of origin, while they hold their hand on a "biofeedback" sensor. The device reads the body's reactions to the questions, and certain responses flag the passenger as "suspect". Like hundreds of other Israeli security start-ups, SDS boasts that it was founded by veterans of Israel's secret police and that its products were road-tested on Palestinians. Not only has the company tried out the biofeedback terminals at a West Bank checkpoint, it claims the "concept is supported and enhanced by knowledge acquired and assimilated from the analysis of thousands of case studies related to suicide bombers in Israel".

Another star of the Paris Air Show will be Israeli defence giant Elbit, which plans to showcase its Hermes 450 and 900 unmanned air vehicles. As recently as last month, according to press reports, Israel used the drones on bombing missions in Gaza. Once tested in the territories, they are exported abroad: the Hermes has already been used at the Arizona-Mexico border; Cogito1002 terminals are being auditioned at an unnamed American airport; and Elbit - also one of the companies behind Israel's "security barrier" - has set up a deal with Boeing to construct the Department of Homeland Security's $2.5bn "virtual" border fence around the US.

Sat-nav and voicemail are just two of the technologies born in a country approximately the size of Wales

Think of technological innovators and you think of Japan, Korea, the United States. Possibly Germany. You probably don't think of Israel. But you should - Israel produces more innovative ideas and new start-up companies than almost any other country in the world. Every time you send a text, or power up your sat-nav system to plan your route, you're using a piece of kit that has its roots in Israel. Not bad going for somewhere roughly the size of Wales, with a population of seven million, and which didn't even exist as a nation state 60 years ago.

In 2005, venture capital investment in Israel was US$1.34 billion - Britain, by comparison, has almost ten times the population but less than twice the venture-capital investment. This is due in part to the Israeli government, which contributes heavily towards funding start-up companies, and which has, for the past 10 years, run a venture-capital fund through the office of the chief scientist. It believed that if it kick-started funding domestically, foreign capital would follow.

The risk paid off: a Morgan Stanley report published in January showed that foreign capital flows to Israel rose from $3.2 billion in 2002 to $11.6 billion in 2005, and then to a massive $23.4 billion just a year later. There are 75 Israeli companies on the Nasdaq, more than from any other country except the US.

The reasons for Israel's success in the technology arena are complex [Rubbish! It's just another example of the power of IQ]. Cultural, social and political factors all play a role, as does the investment ploughed into the country's military, and the training and expertise acquired by Israelis through compulsory national service.

Ronen Saffer, chief technology officer at Telmap, a digital navigation company founded in Israel, blames fruit. "There's only so much you can do with oranges," he says. "We produced all we could out of those in the 1960s and 1970s, then we had to come up with something else in order to make a living." Telmap is the epitome of this new approach - it provides mapping software for the likes of AOL, Ericsson, Palm, Nokia and BlackBerry. Helen Davis, author of Israel in the World: Changing Lives Through Innovation, agrees. "There's no alternative. There are no natural resources at all, except what is between the ears of the country's people. That is Israel's only raw resource." .....

Many of the technologies used all over the world today were either invented or developed further in Israel, or by Israeli companies. From voice components developed for combat systems, an Israeli company called Efrat Systems created voicemail; eventually it became Comverse, one of the largest voicemail companies in the world today.

Instant messaging, an application used by millions today, came from a small Israeli business called Mirabilis, which developed a project called ICQ ("I seek you"). Vardi was the founder investor of Mirabilis, while his son was one of the three jobless youngsters who started the company. Less than two years after its formation, it was bought by AOL, which wanted ICQ. The instant-messaging craze was largely born out of this deal.

Unsurprisingly, much of this technology has its roots in the military, which focuses on developing cutting-edge hardware and software. Israel operates a system of compulsory military service, and students are cherry-picked by the military from high schools across the country in order to match conscripts to the roles that best utilise their talents.

Roy Timor-Rousso, vice president for product marketing at Fring, a VOIP company (VOIP allows you to make phone calls over the internet via services such as Skype) that has its roots in Israel, says: "The military can pick who it wants. A lot of young, very talented Israelis go through special units where they are exposed to a lot of responsibility, trained and given the top military technologies early on in their careers, while they are still creative."

Telmap's Ronen Saffer says that the military research and development budget has been responsible for developing things such as GPS, maps and communications technology. The people involved in creating these tools of war have had the foresight to understand their potential as everyday applications, and have gone about tweaking the technology for the mass consumer market upon being demobbed from the services.

"Civilian casualties are occurring, despite much discretion being used on the firing. I saw three MLRS rockets hit targets downtown today (June 20) and more were fired. Watched the video feed from the TOC as some of them hit. The targeting was perfect. Our guys had cleared out the civilians, but the enemy starts shootouts using civilians as cover. American officers are trying to account for civilian casualties; media is asking and command is still unable to answer, which of course looks like a cover-up. From what I see on the ground, there is no cover-up. The number is unknown but certainly there must be some....

The enemy in Baqubah is as good as any in Iraq, and better than most. That’s saying a lot. But our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan."

Especially here in the great Republic of Texas, a smiling, drooling preference for succulent, protein-rich, nutritious backstrap over aromatic mesquite coals is as American and natural and right as Mom, apple pie and the flag. It's beautiful, really. But a culture war rages against such universal, self-evident truths. It would be laughable if it were not so deranged. Some weirdos actually are on a crusade to outlaw the consumption of flesh.

I have musical touring associates who have been fired from their jobs with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney for sneaking a hamburger. You heard that right. Fired for eating meat by an animal-rights maniac, hard-core vegan bass player. The entire agenda of the gazillion-dollar-financed joke known as PETA literally is dedicated to outlawing meat.

Neither I, nor any hunter or meat eater on the planet, has any desire whatsoever to influence any vegetarian's choice of diet or to force them to eat meat. We are the friendly, tolerant Americans. This is but one of many issues that represent the line drawn in the sand between liberals and conservatives.

Our own intrepid opinion editor at the Trib, my friend John Young, doesn't want to simply make the choice to be unarmed and helpless for himself. He has again recently insisted that you and I must also comply with his soulless condition of unarmed helplessness in "gun-free zones." Nobody from our side wants to force anybody to have a gun or defend themselves. It is us, the conservatives, who are for individual choice.

As for the American left: One hears the words of Mao Tse-Tung come broiling out of the mouths of its heroes, when Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton et al unflinchingly push for "redistribution of wealth." Central Texas' own Chet Edwards has the audacity to support taxing the after-tax life savings of American families following the death of a loved one. The unfair, un-American, unconstitutional death tax literally destroys mom-and-pop businesses across the land. Think about it.

The wall that once symbolized communism is down, yet some still want to give it a shot. Dear God in heaven, help us.

The Howard government has moved to put an end to the drunkenness, violence and child abuse in remote Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory. Among the measures announced are linking welfare payments to the attendance of children at school, the banning of booze, an audit of government funded computers to detect and remove pornography, a massive clean-up campaign by the locals to get rid of the mountains of garbage around their houses etc etc.It's a pretty drastic program--the N.T. News has headlines screaming "MARTIAL LAW".

Yet....and yet the usual suspects, civil rights activists, lefty stirrers and all the feelgood theorists who seldom--if ever--visited these hellholes are up in arms. Words such as "genocide" are being used and one of the main complaints I've seen is that this initiative may win the government the next election.Fine. If giving kids like these a decent opportunity in life, if protecting them from rape and starvation and pornography, if ensuring they get a good education wins John Howard the next election, all I can say is seldom will an election have been won by anyone more deserving of it.Gecko picUpdate:"PRIME Minister John Howard says support for his plan to tackle child sexual abuse in indigenous communities has been so overwhelming, that members of the public are volunteering their services."News.com.because Aussies are so--you know--racist and all.

Remember that British hostage fiasco a while ago, where the Iranians captured a number of British sailors and the EU dithered and waffled with their unity and soft power and promoting peace. Eventually the Iranians forgave the British transgression and sent the sailors home to a grateful nation; this is not a one-off incident of Iran humiliating Britain. Keep an eye on the news and you can see the British Embassy in Tehran is pretty much a free-for-all who have excess stock of eggs and stones. That’s what ‘soft’ power, waiting for everyone to vote and everyone to decide that you’re on your own gets you. They should send some folks down under to see how things get done out here.

"What I've been told by several sources, military sources, (is that) there was a similar encounter, in this case between the Royal Australian Navy and Iranian gunboats, some months ago, or at least some months prior to the seizing of the British sailors," Gardner said on ABC radio. "The Australians escaped capture by climbing back on board the ship they'd just searched. I'm told that they set up their weapons.

"No shots were exchanged but the Iranians backed off and the Australians were able to get helicoptered off that ship and they didn't get captured." "What I'm hearing is that it was a pretty robust attitude by the Australians," Gardner said. "The words that somebody said to me was that they used pretty colourful language but I'm sure that alone didn't make the Iranians back off. Source.

Ah the Aussies, there may not be a lot of us, but the few that are around can get 'colorful' and 'robust' when needed. I can just imagine the Aussies, come on you bunch of pansies, you want a piece of us, come get some Aussie beef mother@#$&!*$. Comes with a side helping of, super-sized, steaming hot lead, well what are you bitches waiting for.

BONE-chilling winds of up to 75km/h have blasted through southeast Queensland, bringing down trees, powerlines and even a brick wall. The southwesterly winds saw Brisbane record its lowest June temperature on record. A maximum of 13.1C was recorded at the airport but the wind chill factor dragged this down to only 5.6C.

At a Fortitude Valley construction site, a freestanding wall collapsed on to a neighbouring unit block at about 5am, hammering the roof with up to 80 concrete bricks. Builder Ivano Berlese said it was a "freak of nature". "It really must have come through here hard, because the wheelie bins were all blown over and there was a power line down in another street," he said. Five people were evacuated from the top floor of the building at about 5:30am and allowed back in briefly a few hours later, to pick up some belongings.

The wind was also blamed for halting train services on the Cleveland line, after blowing debris on to overhead wires. Queensland Rail said buses were organised to transport passengers between Lindum and Cleveland, during the morning peak. Fallen trees and branches also caused disruption to traffic and power supply. More than 4000 homes and businesses were blacked out across southeast Queensland throughout the day.

The Lockyer Valley, Gatton, Dayboro and the Sunshine Coast fared the worst. Brisbane escaped relatively unscathed from blackouts. The cold snap pushed southeast Queensland electricity usage to its highest this winter as people turned on power-hungry reverse cycle airconditioners and heaters.

Weather bureau statistician Ann Farrell said the previous June record for the airport was 13.9C in 1958 and the coldest overall was 10.6C in August 1954. Toowoomba was worse off, recording a wind chill temperature of -9.3C overnight, with parts of the Darling Downs reporting a blast of early morning sleet and snow. At noon it had risen to -3.8C. All of the Downs and Granite Belt reported extremely cold conditions, with Warwick 1C at 2pm and Applethorpe -1.2C, thanks again to the wind. Overnight Brisbane dipped down to -2.5C, allowing for the wind factor.

Ms Farrell said overcast conditions had caused the temperature to be about 5C lower than predicted. "Once cloud cover comes over and it combines with cold air, the temperatures won't go up," she said. Better conditions are predicted for today although it will remain cold, with clear skies. Moreton Bay was no place to be with gusts recorded to 76km/h at the Inner Beacon, about halfway between the mainland and Moreton Island.

Laughter has so far been a sadly neglected weapon in the War on Terror. Now at last we have some anti-jihadist humor. A husband tells his totally veiled wife: “Look at you — you are still as beautiful as the day I met you!” Family members gathered at the bedside of their gravely ill father reel in horror when the attending physician tells them that the only available donor kidney is from a Jew. (A mullah is called in to convert the kidney to Islam.) A young suicide bomber fakes having a cold so that his parents won’t make him carry out a planned attack on the U.S. embassy. (The father is angry: “I told all my friends to watch the TV news!” Mom, however, is sympathetic: “That embassy is not going anywhere, young man, and neither are you.” Dad: “Samah, please — he’s blowing himself up!” Mom: “Exactly! You want him giving his cold to everybody?” Etc., etc.) These brief but hilarious sketches come from a series called Sands of Passion, created by www.NationalBanana.com, which describes itself as an “online comedy network.” Good luck to them, and let us give thanks for the grand American tradition of irreverent humor from which they spring.The Week, June 25, 2007 National Review

In Samuel P. Huntington's book "Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity," he asks: "Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico or Brazil."Ann Coulter writing in BUSH'S AMERICA: ROACH MOTEL

Call to lower voting age to 16An MP is calling for the voting age to be lowered to 16 saying young people should be given a voice.

Green Party MP Sue Bradford is drafting a bill which, if passed, would lower the voting age by two years from the current 18.NZ Herald

This MP is the same unelected zealot moron with a criminal history who recently managed to get the infamous "anti-smacking" bill passed into what Kiwis laughingly refer to as "law", despite over 80% of New Zealanders being opposed to it.It's what they call "democracy" here.16 year olds being given the vote? The same 16 year olds who haven't contributed a cent in taxes get to decide how that money is spent? The 16 year olds so screwed by the edukashun system that employers have to teach them basic comprehension and writing skills? 16 year olds who think the apex of intellectual effort is composing a text message? Most of them have never read a book any more demanding than Dr. Seuss.They're so brainwashed by their lefty teachers they'll have to be taught not to vote for Josef Stalin because he's dead and pickled.riiight. I suppose it's no more insane than a childless P.M. lecturing us on how to bring up kids. Or the same communist P.M. --who's never had a real job-- lecturing business leaders about the economy and what they're doing wrong.Or the Governor of the Reserve Bank trying to take on international currency speculators when NZ has a GDP roughly equivalent to the District of Columbia...(true)This country is fucking nuts.

That word is thrown around far too easily today but these people have earned it. First of all, the two men who were shot by that piece of shit Christopher Wayne Hudson in Melbourne.

Brendan Keilar and a Dutch tourist (whose name I don't think has been released yet) saw a woman, a complete stranger, in trouble and went to her assistance. Both got shot, Keilar was murdered. I truly do not have the words to properly express my respect for those two gentlemen.

They have set the standard for how citizens should be act when a fellow citizen is in trouble.

Then we have the nine fire fighters who lost their lives over in South Carolina when a roof collapsed on them.

Fire fighters (along with police) are greatly undervalued and get neither the respect nor compensation they deserve. And I'll tell you this - while police are out there everyday and are targeted by the worst scum of humanity, I would still rather be facing an armed gang than having to fight back a wall of fire some 30kms long, which could engulf you in a matter of seconds at the whim of a change in the wind.

Yet these fire fighters willingly go out and face these infernos, often at the cost of their own lives.

I guess they didn’t get the memo about how they were supposed to torture and murder those children instead of saving them from such appalling conditions...

Those guys have a tough job as it is, and seeing something like this, something that strikes home so hard to those of us in Western Civilization is something else they will have to live with, and yet they will go on doing their duty in the face of it all.

We all know how the leftist filth are going to play that, and while I was going to say it, let's just sit back and wait for them to reveal how completely and morally bankrupt they are all by themselves.

Spare a moment’s thought for those guys, and if you are so inclined, spare a prayer for the families of the deceased.

In America, there seem to be only minor grumbles about politicians who claim to represent "the little guy" flitting about in private jets and living in huge mansions etc (The Clintons, John Edwards and Al Gore spring to mind), but egalitarianism is much more deeply embedded in the Australian psyche and the story below about Australia's Federal Leftist leader will be very critically received by many Australians.

Rudd might claim that his preferential treatmment was the work of the restaurateur rather than his own doing but many Australians would have expected him to wait his turn. Conservative Prime Minister John Howard is known for lining up patiently on election day and waiting for his turn to vote.

The pic is from a Brisbane free newspaper (of June 14) called "City News" and the story appeared on p.17

In case the text is not clear, I reproduce it below:

Ruddy fish thief

DOESN'T it warm the cockles of your heart that Australia is an egalitarian nation where power and privilege won't curry you any favours? Yeah, right. Reader Josh ordered the salmon when he and his mates went for lunch at swanky Eagle St Pier eatery II Centro recently. They then noticed prime ministerial hopeful Kevin Rudd and a bunch of 'suits' arrive. Within 10 minutes they had food on their table, despite arriving after our luckless Josh, who noted our Kev had also picked the salmon. Then I was told that they'd run out of salmon and I had to choose something else. "Bloody Rudd was eating my lunch," Josh told Buzz.

Behind our "Western" heart

As the name of this blog implies, we have always welcomed contributors and readers from anywhere in the Western world. But there is also something else behind the name. The blog originated in Australia and most contributions come from Australia. And that is very fitting. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart -- and you will see that in the posts appearing here. Events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Some brief observations about Leftism

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"